


Magdalena

by Sylvestris



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22223791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvestris/pseuds/Sylvestris
Summary: He’ll consider this trip a success if nobody dies and nothing ends up on fire.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53
Collections: Blue Christmeth 2019





	Magdalena

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gimmejimmy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gimmejimmy/gifts).



> Happy Blue Christmeth, gimmejimmy! I had a blast writing for this prompt, and I hope you enjoy.

_Gloriosus et Liber_ , it says in tiny print in the iridescent roundel stamped on his Manitoba ID card. Glorious and free. That’ll be the day. All the parts of his life that have nothing to do with either Gus Fring or the Salamancas have taken on a gleaming importance, and yet they shrink and keep shrinking. A great jagged piece broke off the day Hector sauntered into his father’s shop and dirtied up the polished old countertop with his drug money. What could Hector— before or after the stroke— ever understand about goodness? Over the years he’s been pared down until only the essential violence remained. It’s a process he’s sure the others will undergo if they live long enough. All the Salamancas he’s met have been cut from the same cloth.

It’s quiet when Nacho slows the car to a crawl on the barren highway outside Fring’s distribution center. “That’s it,” he says, although the place is the size of a minor municipal airport and there are no other buildings in sight. Lalo nods, filing that information away wherever he’s keeping it.

“Keep going,” he says, flicking a finger toward the southern horizon. 

Nacho does as he’s told, having just been treated to an anecdote about what the Salamancas did to a man who dared to disrespect Hector. The smell of burning leather and horsehair stuffing. Remember?

“Funny thing about riding shotgun: I just sit there watching the world go by and I think about all the little things I ought to be doing,” Lalo says. “You know what I mean? There’s this guy down in Socorro I want to talk to. He has something of ours. Shouldn’t take more than a day.”

Nacho shrugs, studying the unspooling road. It’s not as if “no” is an option here. He has no reason to expect that Lalo is even telling the truth. There’s lots of open land between here and Socorro, plenty of places where Lalo could quickly and quietly end the life of a suspicious subordinate.

“Socorro’s not that far,” Nacho points out, keeping his posture relaxed and his tone flat. _Shouldn’t take as much as a day_ , he means.

“Well, first we have to find the guy. Leonel says that his buddy told him that the kid skipped town, but— who _does_ that?” He barks out a laugh. “It’s like— have they _met_ my cousins?”

Nacho keeps his mouth shut, in case that’s bait. It’d be right out of Tuco’s playbook if it were. _What do you mean? You got a problem with my cousins? You think my cousins are crazy? You think I’m crazy?_ As a matter of fact, he thinks those might be his last words one day. Gun to his head, nothing left to lose, _you’re all fucking crazy._ Bang. The thing about Lalo that disconcerts him is he seems to have inherited all the self-control in the family. It reminds Nacho of something he read once about mountain lions: they stalk their prey. You won’t see one until it wants you to see it.

“And when we find him?”

“You got a toolbox in the trunk?” Lalo asks, straight-faced, then breaks into a wide grin. “I’m just kidding.”  
  
He doesn’t have a toolbox. He does have a gun, of course, as does Lalo, and normally he wouldn’t steel himself for Iraq-level carnage to break out when they’re only bringing two guns to deal with a problem, but after his last outing with Lalo’s cousins he’s come to understand that anything can escalate out of his control. He’ll consider this trip a success if nobody dies and nothing ends up on fire. 

“You know, I wasn’t kidding about that chicken,” Lalo says out of nowhere, after ten minutes of silence. “ _So_ good! It’s always nice to see a front business that’s actually thriving. Fring could probably ditch the lot of us, open a couple dozen more restaurants, and never look back. Sure you aren’t hungry?”

Nacho makes a non-committal sound. 

“You think if he ever went over to the feds, they’d let him keep running his business?” Lalo muses. “Nah. Couldn’t be. They’d seize every last penny. Also, we’d kill him.”

“Guy like that,” Nacho hazards, “he’d be risking too much. He’s a big booster for the DEA. Goes to their fundraisers. If he were a rat, he’d never be so open about it.”

“You’re probably right,” says Lalo. They’re south of the Manzanos now, and the land either side of the blacktop is flat and subdued, treeless all the way to the horizon. The interstate has dwindled to two lanes in each direction. An ancient volcano shimmers at the end of the road; from here it looks like a heap of mine tailings. 

“Beautiful car,” Lalo comments. “Looks brand new. Did you restore it yourself?”

“I did the inside,” Nacho says. “Guy up in Española did the paint.” Maybe giving up trivial information will help Lalo think of him as forthcoming, not secretive. He won’t say that the guy up in Española is his cousin. They don’t need to know that.

Lalo drums on the dashboard for a moment, then motions to the radio. “You mind if I—?”

“Go ahead.”

He flips back and forth between Tejano and hard rock. Forty-five miles to Socorro. Nacho’s stomach twists. 

* * *

  


Vincent Segura made himself easy to find by living in what seems to be the only student housing complex in Socorro. A shortish red-haired kid answers the door; his taller friend hangs back, eyeing Lalo and Nacho with open suspicion. 

“Hey there!” says Lalo, leaning on the doorjamb in such a way that he seems to fill the frame. “I was wondering if you guys could help me. I’m looking for Vincent Segura.”

“Oh, he’s not…”

“He’s not here right now,” says the friend, right as the first kid says, “He actually transferred to another college.”

It’s an unremarkable student apartment. Soda cans and pizza boxes, a large squashy couch. On the split screen behind them, two digital cars sit frozen mid-race.

“You’re all students, right?” Lalo says. “What do you study?”

“Climate science,” says the redhead, shifting uncomfortably.

“Uh, metallurgy.”

“Metallurgy! Wow. I studied business. And let me tell you, the skills and principles you learn at this tender age… they’ll stay with you for life. For example, right now, my business is owed fifteen thousand dollars.” He sucks in a breath, frowns.

“Bad,” ventures one of the students.

“Yeah, that’s… rough,” the other chimes in.

“It is bad. But, in business, it’s not all about the money. It’s about nurturing relationships with people. For the long term. So you can’t go breaking down doors and shooting people up over a little bit of money.” He pantomimes twirling a pair of six-shooters. “Not at first.”

The kid who opened the door gives a nervous laugh.

“Which is why I really, really want to talk to Vincent. ‘Cause we can still work something out! But if he won’t talk to me… then the relationship we built together… that’s over. And then…” Lalo tut-tut-tuts, leaning on the doorframe with both elbows. “Well, who knows what could happen after—”

“He’s at 613 Fifth Street South,” the taller kid blurts out, avoiding all of their eyes. He looks at his friend. “What?”

“ _Dude_.”

“Hey, I told him to take responsibility for his shit,” the kid says in a forced whisper. “I am _done_ covering for him. He’s holed up with fifteen grand of someone else’s money? That’s his problem now.”

“Well, you don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

“I am not letting you make me into the bad guy here. Who paid last year’s security deposit after he smoked it up in here with his tweaker friends? We could’ve been evicted over that.”

“I’m saying—” his friend interjects. “I’m saying, sometimes you might be right about something, but that doesn’t make you not an asshole about it. That’s all.”

“Do you really want to do this right now? In front of these guys?”

“Are we done here?” Nacho asks Lalo.

“Almost,” Lalo says, scanning the living room. “Just in case: which room is Vincent’s?”

The tall kid points to one of the doors.

“Philip, I swear to _God_ …”

“Just let him do it,” Nacho says, as Lalo disappears into Segura’s bedroom. He can hear drawers being opened and overturned, a heavy piece of furniture scraping across the floor. The three of them stand at awkward angles to each other. The scraping doesn’t stop.

“Uh, do you want a Coke or something?” the kid asks Nacho.

“I’m good.”

Lalo emerges empty-handed.

“613 Fifth Street South, right? So if my buddy and I head over there right now, we’ll find him?” Lalo has crept so close to Philip that his breath ruffles Philip’s hair; the kid bends backwards at the waist a little, trembling slightly with the strain, but his feet stay planted.

“I mean, I can’t promise he won’t have gone out.”

* * *

  


613 Fifth Street South is a boarded-up shop on a corner lot with a chain-link fence. The cracks in the concrete are thick with wild grass and chamisa. A security camera, obviously fake, hangs limply from an utility pole. 

“What do you think?” Nacho asks.

“Watch the car,” Lalo says, and jumps out. Nacho watches as he climbs the gate and disappears around the back of the building. Ten seconds later, he’s on the flat adobe roof, using a piece of scrap metal to pry open a skylight. A couple of cars pass. Then the plywood nailed in place where the front door used to be seems to explode from inside, and Lalo comes bounding out, dragging a skinny dark-haired kid by the ear. He gets the kid over the fence by holding him at gunpoint, and Nacho checks the clock on the dashboard: well, they made it nearly two hours into this escapade before anyone pulled out a gun. That’s something. 

“What the hell, man? I didn’t do anything, I swear to God—!”

“Please shut up,” says Lalo good-naturedly, wrangling him into the front passenger seat and climbing into the back himself. He has his gun to the kid’s head, the barrel lined up on the headrest. “Vincent Segura. That’s you?”

Vincent sniffs and nods, his hands shaking. 

“Great! It’d be awkward if we did this to the wrong guy. Pleasure to meet you, Vincent! My name is Lalo Salamanca.”

“Oh, God!”

“‘Oh, God’ is right,” says Lalo, as Vincent clasps his hands over his mouth. “Seems like he has heard of us. Cheer up, Vincent! I could have sent my cousins. Luckily for you, I’m in a very good mood today, so I’m just going to ask you nicely: where’s the money?”

“Just give me a second,” Vincent sobs, like he’s having some sort of panic attack. “Oh, Christ, man. You could have _knocked_.”

Lalo bursts out into full-throated laughter. 

“Oh, Christ, man. Okay. The money. Okay. I will have it for you… momentarily.”

“Momentarily?” Lalo pulls a face. “Doesn’t quite work for us.”

“I have it, man, just not, like, physically. Not right here.”

“Not right here, huh? Well, why don’t you take us to wherever it is?”

“I could— I guess… I gotta make a couple of calls first…”

“‘Fraid this isn’t like jail, buddy,” says Lalo, buckling his seatbelt. “You don’t get a phone call. Just tell us where.”

“It’s… it’s in Magdalena,” says Vincent. “Uh, just… just turn left here and then right, and get on Route 60 for like thirty miles, and I know someone there and they’re good for it, I promise.”

“If we’re going to Magdalena, I’m going to need gas,” says Nacho.

“There’s a gas station two blocks down around the corner,” says Vincent.

“I’m going to put this away out of sight so my friend can get us some gas,” Lalo says, nudging the muzzle of the gun against Vincent’s cheek, “but trust me: if you try anything stupid…”

“I know, man. You don’t need to… I know.”

“I’ll shoot you in the back,” Lalo says anyway. “But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, right?”

  
  


Had Nacho been given a choice, he wouldn’t have left his Javelin parked at a gas pump in Socorro with a gun-wielding Lalo Salamanca inside, but you can’t always get what you want. He intuits that Lalo would be insulted if he took the keys. Inside the little convenience store, he catches himself staring at the back door marked EMERGENCY EXIT. There’s a poster on the wall next to it of a fluffy grey kitten clinging to a branch. _Hang In There!_ it says.

“Can I help you, sir?” The young clerk is nervous about him, though she’s trying to hide it. He didn’t miss her glancing at his earring and the chain around his neck.

“Uh, give me twenty bucks on two,” he tells her, and pays for the gas and three bottles of water.

Lalo sings loudly along to a cumbia station until they get high enough into the hills that the radio signal crackles and fuzzes out. Vincent spends most of the drive looking like he might throw up. Nacho guesses he’s nervous because the money isn’t nearly as accessible as he made it out to be and they won’t get it _momentarily_ or perhaps ever, but they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. Around them the landscape turns red and jagged, framed by bruise-coloured mountains.

“You said Magdalena,” Nacho says, after they’ve passed the Chamber of Commerce welcome sign and a clutch of small houses. “This is it. Where?”

“Uh, just— dude, you’re freaking me out,” Vincent snaps, turning around to face Lalo, who still has the gun in his hand. “I swear it’s just— just drive all the way through town, and go past this big red like shipping container next to a windmill, and it’s the house attached to the old motel on your left. Literally, shoot me if it turns out I’m lying.”

“Oh, I will,” Lalo says brightly.

“Here,” says Vincent, pointing past a dismal-looking motel signposted THE SUNSHINE MOTOR INN ON ROUTE 60 and towards a low-slung home tucked away in some trees behind it. A middle-aged blonde woman answers the door.

“Hello?”

“Hey! Betty! You know all that volume I fronted you? Well, you owe me for it. Now.”

“Now?” The woman speaks in a slow-roasted drawl and seems completely immune to his urgency. “Like, _now_ now?”

“Like _yesterday_.”

“Who’re your friends?” Betty asks, peering over Vincent’s shoulder. 

“They’re not my friends… or yours,” says Vincent, picking up steam. “In fact, if you don’t pay up, they’re gonna be your worst enemies.”

“All right. Settle down. How much?”

“Eighteen large. Fifteen’s theirs and I get three.”

“And if I told you I didn’t have it?”

“Lady, either way, we’re getting paid tonight,” says Lalo, hands in pockets. 

“I’m kidding. I have it.”

It turns out the motel next door is fully abandoned. It doesn’t even look as if anyone’s been squatting there. The only signs of recent habitation are a couple of sun loungers by what looks like an on-and-off bonfire in the middle of the parking lot. A man with sunglasses and a waterfall of grey hair reclines on one of them, fully dressed, flicking cigarette butts into the rest of the ashes. If he notices any of them arriving, he doesn’t show it.

“It’s gonna take me a little bit to put this together, so make yourselves at home,” Betty calls, unlocking the main office door. “Start a fire if you want. It gets chilly after dark. Or Danny’ll do it.”

“Wait,” says Nacho, before she can go inside. “I want to see it first.”

Betty shrugs. “Fair enough. Come on in.”

She peels back a desiccated strip of carpet and unscrews a floorboard in one of the bedrooms. A neat stack of bills sits in a hole about the size of a brick.

“That’s what, two grand? Not even?”

“Well, there’s twenty rooms in this place, and these hidey-holes are just the ones I’m telling you about. You do the math. And don’t get any ideas about bringing your friends over here, because we’ve got 24/7 surveillance.”

“This seriously works for you?” he has to ask. “What if some tweaker comes by and decides to tear the place up for copper pipes and whatnot?”

“Maybe that’s a problem over in I’m guessing Albuquerque, but out here?” She shakes her head. “I know my customers. And they know not to mess with me.”

Outside, a fire flickers in the unsteady heap of wood. Vincent sits on one of the loungers, wringing his hands. Danny hasn’t moved from the other.

“How long’s she going to take?” Lalo asks.

“Could be a while,” Nacho says. A power drill whirrs inside. Lalo nods, then turns to Vincent.

“So: you want to tell me how you let her owe you fifteen grand?”

“I don’t know, man. How’d you let _me_ owe _you_ fifteen grand?” Lalo clips him in the jaw. “Hey! Asshole.”

“You’ve been subcontracting without our permission.” Lalo tut-tut-tuts again. “That’s no way to do business, Vincent.”

“Dude, just— just shoot me or whatever it is you’re going to do and get it over with.”

“Relax, Vincent. I’m not gonna shoot you. You’ve been honest with us, and that counts for a lot. Honesty, integrity, trust… these are the values I hold dear,” Lalo says. “Now, give me your shirt.”

“What?”

“Shirt.” Lalo clicks his tongue and whistles. “Now.”

The kid looks helplessly at Nacho.

“You heard him,” Nacho says.

Scoffing, Vincent unbuttons his shirt. At Lalo’s expectant stare, he strips off his undershirt as well. _Only God Can Judge Me_ is tattooed in a wide swath beneath his collarbones. Lalo nearly bends double laughing. 

“Oh, that is just… that is just beautiful…”

“Fuck you, man,” Vincent mutters, wrapping his skinny arms around his midsection.

“Oh, what it is to be young, right?” says Lalo, clapping him on the back hard enough to jolt him forward. “These are precious years, Vincent. Treasure them. Now, give me your shoes and your pants.”

“What, are you some kind of pervert?”

“Just do as he says,” Nacho advises. Lalo folds the shirt and jeans and tosses them into the back seat of the car.

“You’ll get them back when we get our money. Call it collateral.”

“Whatever, man. This is bullshit.”

“Can you give us a minute?” Nacho asks Lalo, who obediently steps away to poke at the fire. He pulls Vincent to the side, out of earshot.

“What?”

“Cut out the backtalk. It’s not helping your case.”

“What, am I supposed to just let him keep dicking me around like this?” Vincent counters. “Is that how he treats you?”

Nacho folds his arms across his chest and waits until Vincent looks him in the eye. 

“I’m guessing you know a lot of small-timers. You know, twenty-two-year-olds who act like they’re O.G., think they’re all about mi vida loca ever since they got twelve months suspended for possession, that type of guy?” Vincent nods uneasily. “Lotta guys like that up in Albuquerque too, and the Salamancas? _They eat them for breakfast_. Their boss is sixty-five years old and he’s spent more time in federal prison than you’ve been alive. I have personally seen his nephew shoot someone in the face for something he didn’t even do. Look at me, Vincent. I cannot stress enough how serious these people are.”

“So what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Your little speech, it was all ‘them, them, them’. Not ‘us’. Aren’t you a Salamanca?”

If he says no, it’s a crack in his armour that even Vincent is smart enough to see. If he says yes…

“You’re asking me, if shit goes south tonight, am I going to have your back?” Nacho says. “The answer is no. Go sit in the car.”

Instead, Vincent takes off at a wild barefoot sprint, scrambling over the road and away into the velvet-dark desert. Nacho expects Lalo to whip out his gun and take the shot, but he doesn’t; he just stares at the retreating figure looking almost impressed.

“Huh,” he says. “Well, I think he learned his lesson.”

  
  


Dawn breaks somewhere west of Polvadera. All the dusty little access roads seem to lead into each other. Nacho knows that if he got back down into the valley he’d know where he was, but the route he takes keeps rising back up into the hills. Lalo, dozing in the passenger seat, rouses and stretches mightily.

“Breakfast’s on me,” he says. “Aren’t you starving?”

“I could eat,” Nacho allows, just as a set of flashing blue lights appears in his rear-view mirror. Lalo’s eyes go comically wide.

“Is that a _state trooper_?”

“Yep,” says Nacho, pulling over and opening his window. He stares straight ahead as the cop parks behind him, keeping the distant mountains fixed in his vision.

“I need your license, registration and proof of insurance, please.”

Keeping his left hand at ten o’clock on the wheel, Nacho reaches over and fumbles with the catch on the glove compartment. Lalo moves to open it for him.

“Sir, keep your hands on the dashboard,” says the cop.

“Of course, officer,” says Lalo, flashing him a smile, as Nacho hands over his documents.

“Ignacio Varga of Albuquerque,” the cop reads. “Do you know why I pulled you over, Mr. Varga?”

“No, sir.”

“That bend back there? Five crashes there in six years. Two people dead. Not a safe place to make a U-turn.”

Nacho keeps his mouth shut, wondering just where the guy could have been perched to catch that. Of all the things he could be charged with, it’s almost funny.

“Anything in the car I should know about?”

He shouldn’t get in trouble for transporting a loaded gun in the car. He might get in trouble if the cop notices that the gun has no serial number. He must have hesitated just a fraction of a second too long, for the cop’s expression shifts.

“I’d like both of you gentlemen to get out of the vehicle,” he says. “Keep your hands where I can see them, please.”

Nacho stands by the car, keeping his hands well away from his hips so as not to give the cop the slightest reason to think he’s reaching for his waistband.

“Either of you carrying a weapon?”

“Yes, sir,” says Lalo. He spreads his arms wide and strikes an open, relaxed, I’ve-got-nothing-to-hide pose. “We both are.”

Nacho imagines his future splitting at this precise moment: one fork ends with a police report concluding that _the male subject made a threatening statement before reaching for his concealed weapon_ ; another ends with Lalo drawing first, and a state trooper disappearing on a lonely road. He shuts his eyes and grits his teeth.

“Both of you, drop your weapons and put your hands on the roof of the car,” the cop says. Nacho stares at Lalo and wills him to understand: _we don’t shoot cops. Too much heat. Even Hector got that._

“I’m gonna ask you again: is there anything in the car I should know about?”

“No,” says Nacho.

“Do you consent to a search of your vehicle?”

“Yeah,” says Nacho, because he knows the car’s going to get searched either way.

“All right. Both of you leave your weapons on the ground and come round to the front, please.”

The cop is thorough— gloves, flashlight. He starts by rifling through the glovebox and looking under the floor mats, then checks down the sides of the seats. He feels the upholstery in the back for anything suspicious sewn into the stuffing. He looks into the tailpipe, opens the trunk, reaches under the lining, then stops.

“You wanna tell me what this is from?” he asks, holding up the bundle of notes.

“Oh, the _money_!” says Lalo. He slaps his forehead: _darn it_! “I should’ve— I’m buying a car from his cousin. I should’ve told you the money was under there.”

“Yeah? What kind of car?”

“’57 Ford Fairlane,” says Lalo. “Hard top, cherry red, cream leather seats… real beauty. Wish you could see her. Anyway, the seller’s a cash-only kind of guy, real traditional, and I’m a cautious type, so call me crazy but I didn’t want to drive all the way up to Española with fifteen thousand dollars in my pocket. It’s only now that I’m thinking it must look kind of shady, but that’s the truth.”

“If the money’s in the car and the car gets stolen, you’d lose every cent,” the cop points out. “How’s that safer than keeping it in your wallet?”

“I guess that’s true,” Lalo says, with a bashful grin. “What a world we live in, huh?”

“Car six, come in,” buzzes the radio.

“This is six.”

“Be advised, high-speed pursuit in progress on I-25 near Polvadera. There’s a red Mazda heading north at over a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Car three just lost visual contact with the suspect vehicle. Over.”

The cop sighs. “This is car six, responding. Over.”

He tosses Lalo the money and slams the trunk shut.

  


Lalo directs him to stop at Los Pollos Hermanos again. This time, it doesn’t even seem like a flex— Gus Fring is nowhere in sight. Maybe Lalo just really likes the Pollos Classic Green Chile Breakfast Burrito. 

“He really is a good cook,” Lalo sighs, dabbing a sopaipilla in the remnants of his salsa. “It’s a shame about the bad blood.”

“What bad blood?”

“Well.” Lalo sighs, like he’s savouring this. “Back in the eighties, Fring used to be a cocky bastard. He wanted to make a deal with Don Eladio, only Eladio wouldn’t see him, so he sold his crank to Eladio’s men. No, no— he gave them _samples_! Like a salesman with his briefcase—“ Lalo laughs, affecting a stiff, timid set of movements. “‘Oh, Señor Fuente, don’t you know that my product is the drug of the future? The cocaine of the twenty-first century?’ And all the while, his little boyfriend is sitting there, all, ‘oh, Don Eladio, you mustn’t lay a finger on Gustavo, please, please, he saved me from the slums, I can’t live without him’… and right when Fring thinks he’s about to die, Hector walks up and shoots the other guy in the head.” Lalo pushes his plate away and slurps his coffee. “You seriously didn’t know all that?”

Nacho stares into the parking lot and thinks of Manitoba.


End file.
